


Alley Cats and Aristocrats

by revolving_doors



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Consent Issues, Dubious Consent, F/M, M/M, Multi, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-08
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 20:11:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/917547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revolving_doors/pseuds/revolving_doors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prequel to the events of Inception, in which Arthur is a dream hooker and Eames charms his way into dream-sharing parties to steal information. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't take long for their paths to cross.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alley Cats and Aristocrats

**Author's Note:**

> Contains dubious consent between Arthur/others and very consensual sex between Arthur/Eames.  
> I've tried to warn appropriately but if there's anything I've missed, please let me know.  
> You can also find me at [tumblr](http://backdatedloveletters.tumblr.com/)[](http://backdatedloveletters.tumblr.com/)  
> 

There are things you do when you’re rebelling from your parents, from the army, from the whole life plan the world seems to have orchestrated for you. Not that you intend to rebel too far – nothing too unbecoming. You just need to let your hair down for a while. You only really fall down the slippery slope into crime because she looks at you and says you have talent. No-one’s ever said you were good at anything in less than a condescending manner. Blasé, over-enthusiastic, cocky, annoying, over-confident. Never talented.

Some people have too much money for their own good. Eames understands that, he was raised like that, and so mingling at the parties comes naturally. And when the machine appears – and it’s only ever a matter of time until it does – he fakes upper-class indifference as well as the rest of them.

The military has very strict rules. No changing weaponry, no back-doors, no cheating. It is used to learn set-pieces, to test operations, to give personnel a taste of theatre before they are deployed. It is also used for interrogation, and although not publicized, torture.

As soon as word got out amongst discrete circles that the military were using dream technology the SIV starting appearing on the black market. It was more complicated then, didn’t become portable or automated for another few years. Still, a world of private jets made this new technology as portable as the typical amount of luggage for weekend trip to Monaco. The high-flying set followed the machines around the world, high-rolling poker games in one room, dream indulgence in the next.

It’s not until Eames comes across the SIV in a social setting that he gets to stretch his legs and really get a feel of the potential of dream-sharing. He discovers it’s a lot of fun as himself and absolutely astounding being _someone else_. Eames becomes a forger, long before there’s a name for it.

It’s all about being in the right place at the right time. A laugh at a joke, a gentle brush of someone’s arm and with little else – he’s an attractive man and he knows how to use it – they’re pulling out the leads and asking him to take a stroll with them in their subconscious.

It really can’t be classed as stealing if they invite you into their unguarded thoughts.

*

There are things that you do when your rent check is late for the third month in a row and there’s no way you can add another shift at the coffee place down the street unless you sacrifice sleep altogether. You swear you’ll never be desperate enough to sell your body. At the beginning you don’t equate selling your mind as the same thing. By the end you wonder if it’s worse.

The rich and powerful have other people to organize their life for them: people to raise their children, maids, personal assistants, drivers. Dream technicians. Why waste your time dreaming of inadequate things when you can be guaranteed the perfect dream experience?

It’s Arthur’s job to host the dream playgrounds of the wealthy and uncreative. He doesn’t create them from scratch, Frank has architects for that. Instead he learns them by rote; paradise island, safari adventure, the 007 package, bored housewife 101. He never meets the clients – Georgina sits at the front desk and acts as the hostess, guiding clients through their options, leading them down the hall to a room with a single leather recliner. Arthur sits behind a fake wall, his own mind the theatre in which people’s wildest dreams come true.

He spotted the advertisement just before the start of summer sophomore year. _Computer programmers with high ranking memory skills and a good attention for detail._ It had a hundred times more potential than working double-shifts making overly complicated ridiculously named beverages for the under-achieving over-privileged brats who’d spent the last semester sleeping their way through college (literally and figuratively) and would still end up getting hired over him by one of their daddy’s friends.

In the first week he made more money than he would in three months as a barista. By the third month he had enough repeat clients that half the time, well, he could practically do it in his sleep _._

*

“See if you can get the old bird to tell you where she keeps the rest of her diamonds,” Claudine had whispered mischievously, eyeing up a woman of no more than fifty sloshing champagne as she gestured with delight at the unraveling IV lines.

Claudine nudged him as if it was a game. He knew it was anything but; he wasn’t foolish enough not to suspect what she was up to. More than anything, and a lot higher up on his list of reasons for doing it than impressing Claudine or making a quick grand or ten, was the sudden overwhelming thirst he had to see if he _could_ do it.

Eames snuck around in dreams long before elaborate dream construction took over as standard practice in the business of extraction.

Claudine smoked white-tipped cigarettes and always wore a string of pearls, even in bed. She looked around fifteen years his senior but was probably closer to thirty. He was losing at poker in the back room of a place his father would describe as gaudy when she plucked a chip from his victor’s clutches and slipped it into his breast pocket as a _consolation prize_.

“You have an impressive poker face my dear. Even when you were losing you looked as if you had your competitors – and the pot – by their bollocks.”

He was naked on her hotel bed when she offered him a cigarette and the doorway into a whole new world.

*

The first time a client looks directly at him in a dream and tells him to take his shirt off Arthur almost wakes himself up in shock. It’s not that he doesn’t find her attractive – she’s the trophy wife of some top hedgefund executive, brunette and buxom in dreamscape and probably in reality – but up until that point he’s only ever created the fantasies, not played a part in them.

The dream layout is based on a beach in Fiji. Frank calls it the relaxation package – the dream equivalent of a day at the spa, full of white sandy beaches, sun that won’t give you skin cancer and topless waiters with washboard stomachs. It’s not like a client hasn’t shown interest in one of his projections before, but that’s different. Arthur himself has always kept to the sidelines, he’s never participated.

“I think you have me confused with one of the waiters,” Arthur stammers, trying to recall if Frank has ever talked about a situation like this happening.

“I’ve always liked the scrawny ones,” Mrs Kirkwood smiles, suddenly up in his space, her hand busy with the fly of his pants. “Skinny boys that hide at the back of class, the bellboy that stammers when he brings up my bags. Pretty girls never usually give them a second glance. They’re always so thankful that I let them fuck me. Do you think I’m pretty?”

Arthur knows he looks like a deer in headlights, manages to stutter out a “Yes,” as Mrs Kirkwood slips a hand down into his boxers and cups his balls.

He tries to remember what Frank has said, but the only guidance Frank’s ever given him is that the customer is always right.

*

Arthur doesn’t know how much time Frank spends at the office. Sometimes Arthur won’t see him for weeks on end, other times he’ll appear in the corridor just as Arthur’s finished his shift and invite Arthur into his office to drink beer and shoot the shit. Arthur always tries to be professional but inevitably the beer loosens his tongue and he finds himself talking about building worlds, shaping forms, the wart on Mr Bartholomew’s neck and whether the dream-self is an exact replica of the dreamer or what we wish we could be.

It’s probably just coincidence that Frank’s office door is open when Arthur walks past, that Frank looks up from his desk and catches his eye - because Arthur can’t help but look in – and tells Arthur to come have a beer with him.

Frank’s office is the one area of chaos in the entire office. Technicians work on shift, don’t leave personal items in the cubicles they share, come and go like the anonymous faces they are. The only person Arthur ever sees is Georgina. And Frank. Frank teaches him the dreams, here in the chaotic mess of comic books and dismantled hard drives.

He’s only a couple of years older than Arthur, messy hair and Grateful Dead T-shirt making him look more like a college dropout than the company’s CEO. It shouldn’t surprise Arthur really; the high-tech field has always been full of young upstarts making their millions from the latest internet social-networking craze or must-have smart phone app. Arthur’s barely twenty and sometimes he feels like he’s already missed his shot.

It’s somewhere around the third beer, after a meandering discussion about worm holes and dreamspace shifts, Arthur’s foot bouncing up and down, that he finds the words spilling out of his mouth. “I fucked Mrs Kirkwood.”

He looks at Frank, waits for the reaction, the firing, the comeuppance. Confusingly, Frank swings his feet up onto the already cluttered desk, stretches out a crick in his neck and takes a long pull on his beer. “And?”

“And I’m only meant to build the dreams,” Arthur replies, exasperated and guilty. “I’m not meant to participate in them.”

Frank crosses his feet at the ankles and shrugs as if Arthur just told him he accidently broke a glass in the office kitchen. “What happens in a dream is the business of those doing the dreaming.”

“Are you saying this happens a lot?”

“Honestly Arthur, I have no idea. The only feedback I get is that the clients found our dream packages satisfactory or unsatisfactory.”

“But she’s married!” Arthur exclaims.

Franks hums, pondering. “Think of it like this. Who do you think about when you’re jerking off?”

“What?”

“You don’t ask their permission to put them in your fantasies and you do them no harm by fantasizing about them. The occasional sex-dream with a client, well, that’s just a more vivid fantasy. Clients like Mr Kirkwood pay us to entertain their wives. If that entertainment involves some harmless rough and tumble in the dreamscape, who are we to refuse? After all, better that than the pool-boy or gardener.”

“And if it happens again?”

“You’re a clever guy Arthur. Use your discretion.”

*

Arthur never meets his clients. There’s no physical contact, no exchange of bodily fluids, no money on the nightstand. Sometimes it’s a woman, sometimes a man, sometimes they want to fuck him on silk sheets, other times they like the projections to watch.

The envelopes of cash he picks up at the end of each week increase in size and Arthur tells himself it’s simply because he’s doing an impeccable job of hosting dreamscapes.

*

SIV becomes PASIV and in the world of dream entrepreneurialism that’s the equivalent of the beast being unleashed. The Dreamwalker office has moved three times in the last six months, with one time Arthur being informed of his new place of employment by text message barely an hour before the start of his shift. The U.S government may deny all knowledge of dream-sharing but they are still putting a lot of man-power into stopping this allegedly non-existent technology from spreading into civilian circles.

Now a client no longer needs to go to Dreamwalker, Dreamwalker goes to them. The first time, Georgina accompanies Arthur to the client’s accommodation, a penthouse suite in one of the more expensive hotels uptown. It’s the first time he’s been face to face with a client outside of the dreamscape and he’s thankful that Georgina keeps it clinical and professional.

He lies down on the bed next to Mr. Hastings and tries to ignore the sweat circles under the arms of his client’s shirt.

He leaves before money exchanges hands, if it even does in a world of off-shore accounts and anonymous wire transfers.

*

Frank hands Arthur a roll of bills and tells him to make himself look respectable. Prior to this moment Arthur has never bought a suit. He’s rented suits for high school dances, he has jackets and matching pants, but he doesn’t own a real suit. The feel of all the different possible fabrics is exquisite, the fall of the jackets perfect, the fit of the pants tight and smart. Frank never told him to buy a suit – maybe he knew that’s what Arthur would choose. Nonetheless, later Arthur’s glad the formal wear was his own choosing, not tainted by everything else.

*

Arthur’s rule is that they only have sex when they’re under, never in reality, never for _real._ Maybe it’s the dreamscape equivalent of prostitutes never kissing on the mouth, maybe it’s the only thing stopping Arthur from turning the shower water up so hot it scolds and scrubbing his skin until it bleeds.

At first it’s an obvious distinction. But slowly invisible fingers start clawing at his body when he’s least expecting it, the feel of a touch that he’s never felt tingling along his nerves like the phantom hand of an amputee. It’s not selling his body if his body’s not involved in the transaction, he repeats to himself. But the voice in his head sounds like Frank’s not his own and the words have no resonance to them.

*

Eames spots the entertainment the moment they enter the room, far too business-like to be normal guests. Eames has seen dream escorts at various parties across the globe. They make his job harder simply because they are also there to work; they have game plans and time frames, rules and agendas. The escorts always bring hosts to hook the dreamers up and monitor them as they sleep. This makes it impossible to use quick and dirty tactics, hooking up to people who are already under and getting out before they wake up.

It’s also a lot more difficult to extract the whereabouts of a fragment of _Metamorphosis_ by Escher when the owner is otherwise occupied fucking their escort on stage at a Bon Jovi concert. He’s entirely appalled that the owner of said wood block has Bon Jovi related fantasies but mildly relieved that at least the guy has to pay someone to satisfy those needs.

A more close-up inspection of the _in flagrante delicto_ sex antics from the wings of the stage confirms to Eames that there will be no accessible opportunity in the near future to use his own charms to extract the location of the piece of art. Luckily, parties involving _hired entertainment_ usually have more than one dream-share occurring at any one time. He just needs to get himself out of groupie hell, into the dream-share of the mark’s delightful significant other and hope that he also knows the exact whereabouts of the art and any security combinations that may be required to acquire it. Eames has a plan for these very situations. He excuses himself backstage, materializes himself a Colt 45 and calmly puts a bullet in his skull.

The hostess barely looks up from her phone when he removes his own IV.

He leaves the five sleeping bodies and follows the marble stairs down to the drawing room. Four people sit sedated in plush over-stuffed chairs, two female, one unknown male and the ever-adoring partner of the mark. For once luck is on his side and only one host has been hired for two escorts, which leaves this second dream-share entirely unattended.

He settles in a matching chair, slides an IV needle into his vein and slips down into the dreamscape. There’s a writhing mass of bodies sucking, licking and thrusting at each other on an elegant daybed in the middle of the room. Eames puts on a blonde-haired Adonis, in keeping with the dream’s projections, and playfully teases the mark’s partner away from the fray until Eames has him plastered against an infinite marble archway gasping about floor-plans and design features of a newly decorated apartment as if the mere mention of _real-oak flooring_ and _stain-less steel worktops_ is foreplay in itself.

He gets the required information but as he wakes he finds it without the usual deep seated satisfaction of a successful extraction. Instead he’s filled with a sense of melancholy, deep and dark like the after-note of a fine wine.

Macintosh wall paper, plush velvet drapes, Egyptian cotton sheets and circular staircases that seemed never-ending. The dream had been pure craftsmanship, a definitive study in dreamscape creation. Eames will spend his life looking for the flaws in people, the things that make them tick, those terrible afflictions that will be their downfall. Tonight all he saw was perfection. Cold, hard perfection. There was no joy in the dream, no quirk, no endearing crooked smile. He glances around the room as the others stretch and rearrange their attire, eyes settling on a young dark-haired man in a crisp elegant suit. He knows immediately who the dream belonged to.

Eames has all the information he needs and therefore should go about making a few rounds of small talk before he excuses himself to rendezvous with Claudine. But the aftertaste of the dream has him wired and intrigued in a way no other dreamscape has touched him since his first few experiences of dream-sharing.

It’s enough to make him seek out the dark-haired man when all the other revelers have moved out to the balcony. He asks for an extra scotch on the rocks at the bar and takes it back through to the drawing room where the man is busy rearranging cables and checking dials.

“Busy night,” Eames says, settling on the arm of the ottoman by the window and placing the second glass of scotch on the window sill.

“Private sessions need to be discussed with the hostess,” the man says matter-of-fact, not looking up from his wires.

Eames resists the urge to stare but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t take in the exquisite line of the man’s jacket and the lean muscle underneath. Perfection, even in the waking world. And it’s tempting, the opportunity to tear the other man asunder piece by piece, search for the flaws that have to be hiding somewhere. But Eames does not do that, will not do that. He may steal other people’s secrets but he still knows that what he wants from this man should never be something that has a price.

He schools his features into his usual nonchalant expression. “I just thought you might like a drink. Building dreamscapes must be thirsty work.”

“I don’t drink on the job.” the other man says, still busy with the inner workings of the PASIV.

“Of course,” Eames replies, suddenly feeling like a fool. “It must interfere with the dream hosting. Very well, I’ll just leave it on the side for later.”

He’s about to get up and leave when the man looks over at him for a moment, eyes clinical. “I didn’t see you in the dream.”

This is the point where Eames should be worried. He’s let his inquisitiveness get the better of him and now he’s running the risk of someone remembering him as more than just small-talk and a disjointed dream experience. He shrugs, trying to cover his tracks. “Joined in a little late. Missed all the fun. Barely had my wire in when you all woke up.”

The other man smiles suddenly, speaks as if he’s reading from the manual of appropriate escort behavior. “Well, I look forward to your participation in our next session in an hour.”

The urge to break down that immaculate exterior and push and push until the other man comes undone returns with surprising force. Eames manages to tamp down the fire in his belly long enough to excuse himself. “I will adjourn until such a time.”

He leaves the room and takes the quickest route to the exit. It takes four double scotches in the hotel bar before his mind calms enough to go and see Claudine.

*

Claudine hands Eames the woodcut two weeks later, wrapped with a black silk bow. It matches the silk of the blouse she unbuttons as he ponders the tessellated pattern.

He admires the carefully constructed transitions, wondering not for the first time what Escher would have made of dream technology. “I thought this was for a client.”

“Now where would the fun be in having you _know_ you were stealing your own present?” she smiles demurely. “It’s a token of my appreciation,” she says, waving a finger from the architecture on the left towards the figure on the right. “The beauty of metamorphosis.” She runs the same finger down Eames’ cheek. “My talented, talented boy.”

He should be focusing on the contours of Claudine’s breasts, the curve of her hip as she slides out of the skin-tight pencil skirt. Instead his eyes linger on the mole next to her navel, the faint lines at the edges of her eyes. He crouches down and runs his tongue along the white line of an appendix scar and tries not to compare it to the sense memory of cold, dark perfection that the wood-carving reminds him of.

*

It wasn’t much to notice but the Englishman had said he hadn’t gone into the dream. It was true that Arthur hadn’t seen him, but still, something about the whole thing felt strange.

Arthur fixates on it incessantly for the next week, flashing over and over again to the point in the dream where one of the clients moved away from the fray with one of the projections. Arthur knows his projections; he purposefully populates his dreamscapes with projections that match the background. He feels them throughout the dream, a distinct thrum, like the dull ache of a bruise. But when the client went off with that particular projection Arthur felt nothing.

In the end he can only concludes two things:

Number one, the only reason the man would lie about not being in a dream is if he wasn’t meant to be there.

Number two, the only way to hide in one of Arthur’s dreamscapes would be to look like someone else.

Eventually he asks the only person he knows who knows more about dream-sharing than him.

“Who have you been talking to?” Frank asks, drawing his eyes away from the PASIV he’s busy dismantling.

“No-one,” Arthur answers, purposely dragging his words out so they don’t sound incriminating. “I was just thinking about the way images can shift and bend in dreams and wondered how far it could go.”

“It’s a talent very few people have,” Frank says. He looks up from the machine suddenly, as if struck by an idea. “The clients would love it though. Shifting would add a whole new string to your bow Arthur.”

Frank lets him have a few hours with the PASIV. Arthur constructs a room full of mirrors, tries to rebuild himself in the same way that he makes never-ending staircases, concentrates on making the whole more than the sum of its elements. All he ends up doing is turning himself into other versions of himself, as if flicking through a photo album of his life. No matter how hard he tries, all he ends up with is another Arthur.

The mirrors smash one by one, the dream crumbling around him, its very edges seeped in frustration.

All he wants is a new skin, fresh and unbranded by the hands of strangers.

*

It’s London when he sees the Englishman again, out on the patio of a Kensington townhouse. He bides his time until they’re all plugged in. He’s been building this dream especially; an Alice in Wonderland of fake walls, winding trails and mazes that have the new dream-walkers clapping with delight. Arthur tells them it’s a treasure hunt with a prize for whoever solves the maze first and they shriek like children, setting off in all directions. Arthur leaves the other dreamers occupied with his projections and scours the dreamscape for the person pretending not to be there.

He makes a special effort to follow a redhead in a black satin catsuit. A redhead Arthur is certain was not at the party.

The redhead herself is following one of the clients. From the little small-talk Arthur overhead before they all went under this client is the head of a powerful business cartel. Arthur waits until the client passes through a hole in the wall, mentally bricking it over before the redhead has the chance to follow him.

“Oh no,” she exclaims, hands pressed against the newly formed bricks and mortar. She turns and looks at Arthur. “This is a frightfully difficult game.”

Arthur pushes the woman up against the wall; no pretense, no games. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?” she giggles, running a satin covered leg up Arthur’s until it’s almost wrapped around his waist.

Arthur’s not fooled for a second. He’s been planning for this. He’s been waiting for this. “I know who you are.”

The woman leans in, whispering in Arthur’s ear seductively. “And who am I?”

Arthur pushes her away, hard. “I know _what_ you are,” he clarifies, materializing a gun and pointing it directly at the woman.

“Easy tiger,” the Englishman dressed as the redhead says, holding up her hands in surrender but with a smile playing at her lips. “That wasn’t the kind of prize I was hoping for.”

It’s only at this point that Arthur returns to first part of his initial conclusions: he would only lie if he wasn’t meant to be there. Arthur has had many clients who would deny their involvement in dream-sharing. The Englishman doesn’t seem the type.

Frank has warned him about government agencies trying to stop any civilian dream-sharing.

He clicks the safety off the gun. “Who do you work for? MI5? NSA?”

“They’re not this good, darling,” she purrs, running a hand from her breast down to her thigh as if he’s showing off his handiwork.

Arthur is stuck. Lost. Confused. He tries not to let it show on his face. “Then what are you doing here?”

Her grin is mischievous. “Just a little theft. Nothing to concern yourself with.”

Theft? How do you steal from dreams, Arthur wonders. Not that it’s important right now. He takes a step closer, gun still pointed at the redhead. “Show me how you do it and I won’t tell the clients what you’re doing.”

She sighs, almost apologetically. “Sadly my dear, it’s an art and not a skill.”

Before Arthur has a chance to do anything else, there’s a gun in the redhead’s hand and a bullet in her skull.

Arthur would follow but if he goes the dream goes and he’s too close to something – an opportunity, a way through all this, a way out – to risk collapsing the house of cards he’s perched on top of.

*

Frank sends Arthur and two other technicians to Singapore, light entertainment and cocktails at a roof-top bar and a dreamscape private party in a suite at the Marina Bay Sands.

His regular clients prefer one-on-one sessions, secluded dreamscapes where they can push their limits. If you die in a dream the only consequence is that you wake up. No chance of dying from erotic asphyxiation, no sex game that can go too far. Sometimes afterwards Arthur stares at himself in the mirror and pictures what the bruises would look like. He doesn’t need to imagine where they are, he can feel them all underneath his skin.

In comparison, large private parties involving multiple guests are easy, simple work. No-one wants to show their true kinks in front of other party-goers and as a result the most risqué occurrence is a threesome or two. Guests offer them drinks, play as if they aren’t paying Arthur and the others for their time and leave very large tips when it all goes without a hitch.

This party is full of newbies, twenty-something women giggling into their champagne at the idea of sharing dreams and stoic bankers impatiently loosening their ties at the prospect of getting their rocks off in someone else’s wild imagination.

Arthur knows how to work a room, knows how to build a dreamscape to suit everyone, knows what will be expected of him without having to read the notes supplied by Frank.

There is a single familiar face in the room. English accent, stance of ex-military.

He bides his time until everyone’s under. Arthur always builds secret rooms in his dreams, hidden chambers where he can go and breathe. While the clients are acclimatizing to their surroundings he makes a direct play for the Englishman. He may be dressed up as a wiry investment banker, but to Arthur he’s obvious in his disguise. Arthur presses a hard kiss to his lips and a hard hand to his cock, maneuvering him up downwards facing steps until they’re alone in a room full of broken mirrors.

The Englishman goes without objection or fight.

Arthur removes his lips but keeps his hand where it is. This time he’s getting answers. “What are you stealing this time?”

“Who are you whoring yourself out to this time?”

Arthur flinches at the word. “It’s not like that.”

“It’s exactly like that.” He sounds surprisingly bitter.

But Arthur can’t focus on that right now. He’s tried at every opportunity with the PASIV to turn himself into someone else and all he ends up with is Arthur. He’d planned to make the Englishman divulge his secrets next time he saw him, all art involves some skill after all, but now he’s in front of him it just makes it all the more apparent that he can do things Arthur is just not capable of doing. His choice as he’s sees it now is to let the man go or get a piece of the action and look for another way out.

In the end he chooses the latter option. “Then I want half of whatever you’re making.”

The investment banker in front of him smirks, resting his own hand over Arthur’s cock. “For the sex or for letting me escape?”

“Either. Both.” In the end this is what it always comes down to. Sex. Arthur has slept with more people in the dreamscape than he can count. What’s one more? And if the Englishman is stealing something as big as Arthur suspects he is, this pay day is likely to be a lot bigger than the others.

He leans in until their entire bodies are touching, lips finding lips, his tongue pushing into the other man’s mouth.

The Englishman surprises him by backing away. His skin shifts like a mirage in the desert and suddenly the broad-shouldered man Arthur spotted at the party is standing in front of him. He holds a gun to his head. “You help me get the information I require and I’ll give you half.”

It’s not the proposition Arthur was expecting. “What would I need to do?”

“I need the blond Australian isolated from the group. Can you shift the maze so it’s just me and him?”

“Yes.” Arthur can’t help his nonchalance. He can manipulate dreamscapes with barely a raise of an eyebrow. He gestures to the door he’s already constructed on the opposite wall. “There.”

The Englishman disappears without another word.

It turns out that to escape from the life he’s been stuck in for so long all Arthur needed to do was imagine a door.

 *

The other guests head to the bar after they wake, none the wiser about anything that has just happened. Arthur busies himself with the PASIV, waiting for the other man to speak.

“It’ll take me some time to prepare your money,” he says finally, standing up and stretching a crick out of his neck. “I’m staying at the Fullerton. Room 402. Come by tomorrow at noon.”

Arthur looks the man up and down. “How do I know you’ll be there?”

He tilts his face in thought, nodding to himself as he comes to some kind of decision. “I could give you my word but I doubt you’d find it sufficient so I’ll give you something else.” He holds his hand out to Arthur. “Eames. My name is Eames.”

It’s said in folklore that knowing someone's true name gives you power over them and while Arthur doesn’t believe in magic he can see the value of knowing the man’s name. He’s sure there’s more than one person out there who’d be very interested to know the name of the man stealing from their dreams.

He grasps Eames’ hand and shakes it firmly. “Arthur.”

Eames’ face breaks into a grin. “It’s good to meet you Arthur.” He tips an imaginary hat as he steps back towards the door. “Until tomorrow.”

*

Eames is pacing the room. He should be in departures at Changi Airport waiting for the Singapore Airline flight back to London. Instead he’s waiting for the first person who’s ever made him in a dream to show up and take half his projected earnings. When he’d seen Arthur across the room he should have made a run for it, but no, he’d been an idiot and gone into the dream anyway. Eames has always found dream-sharing exciting, fascinating, breath-taking. He couldn’t understand how anyone wouldn’t feel that way until he walked that first beautiful, soulless dreamscape at that party all those months ago. It had haunted him, how something could be so perfect and at the same time so empty. And then he’d encountered that dreamer again. Eames should have been worried when Arthur had pulled out the gun but truthfully he was impressed. No-one else has ever caught Eames in the dreamscape and finally he’d felt like he was on an even playing field, like he was being challenged for the first time since Claudine egged him on to steal a secret.

But it was more than that.

This time there had been a fire dancing in Arthur’s eyes, a fire not reflected in any of the architecture surrounding them. It made Eames want to stoke that fire, press until it was red-hot, push and push until flames spilled out and razed that empty perfection to the ground.

The knock on the door is as inevitable as him being there to answer it.

*

Arthur piles the stacks of bills neatly in his briefcase. He closes the lid and sets the locks in place all the while conscious of Eames’ eyes on him. Eames is leaning against the bathroom door, shirt sleeves rolled up, socked toes tapping on the carpet.

Arthur places the briefcase at the foot of the bed before straightening up and folding his arms across his chest. “Just so we’re clear,” he says, “the money is for helping you get the information you required, nothing else.”

“Of course,” Eames nods, his eyes not leaving Arthur’s for a second. “A monetary exchange for a very specific moment of assistance.”

“Exactly,” Arthur agrees. 

Arthur kisses Eames then, kisses him because he can, kisses him because wants to, drags his teeth along the other man’s jaw, pulls him back until they both fall down on the unmade bed.

It’s messy and unplanned, in as much as Arthur doesn’t count carrying a condom and lube in his briefcase as having a plan but rather a sensible state of preparedness.

Heat is already building in Arthur’s belly as he pushes into Eames, breathless and shaky as he tries to find a rhythm, thankful when Eames starts to press back, working himself on Arthur’s cock. He gets lost in the heady feel of skin on skin, Eames’ hips bucking to match his thrusts now, the air so thick on his tongue that he crashes their mouths together until he feels like he can breathe again.

He comes with his head pressed against Eames’ shoulder. It’s filthy and real in all the right ways.

*

Arthur takes the money. Of course he does.

He leaves a sleeping Eames, heads to the airport and catches the first available flight. He stretches as he exits the plane, skin feeling loose like a snake about to shed its skin.

Three months later he arrives in Paris. If anyone asks he’ll them that it was a craving for the smell of books that brought him to the university and not hours of digging and delving, connecting dots and making sure he was in the right place at the right time.

He takes a research assistant position with an English Scholar who teaches architecture. He spends his first day in an office surrounded by mounds of papers and empty filing cabinets while the professor teaches classes in the wood paneled lecture theatre down the hall. He’s halfway through organizing a three-foot pile of journal articles by author and date when the professor bustles in, opens the bottom drawer of his desk and extracts three wine glasses.

A lithe, dark-haired French woman curls around the door with a bottle of red in her hand and a smirk on her lips.

“Arthur, this is my daughter Mal. Mal, this is Arthur.”

 

_Fin_


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